


Green

by Asymptotical



Series: Fandom: Star Wars - The Old Republic [7]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental soulbond is cultural equivalent of marriage, Games of cat and mouse aren't appropriate flirting techniques, M/M, Theron Shan/Bad Decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/pseuds/Asymptotical
Summary: Theron was fairly sure this sort of thing should have been in a briefing, somewhere, before anyone got sent on missions that took them near Sith rituals.
Relationships: Theron Shan/Male Sith Warrior
Series: Fandom: Star Wars - The Old Republic [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132868
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



Sith rituals tended to come in two flavors: not nearly as dangerous as they tried to pretend, or immediately deadly. 

Sith rituals that _apprentices_ did tended to be mostly just dangerous to the apprentice, if that, because no Sith Lord wanted to find themselves on the wrong side of a botched ritual because some kid was an idiot. 

Which was why Theron found himself carefully moving from room to room trying not to disturb a bunch of mediating apprentices. They were all glowing green. It was a fairly nice green, but Theron had no intention of finding out exactly why. The important part was that they were so deep in meditation that he could probably sneak through and gain access to the datalink in the tomb without a single one of them noticing. 

If any of them did notice, then the whole lot would boil up like angry lightsaber-wielding insects and Theron would be in trouble. 

Luckily he was good at his job. And the apprentices were really into their meditation. 

In and out. Easy. He diverted his path on the way out to match the gaps in the patrols outside the tomb, but as long as he was out before the apprentices were due to stop meditating he didn't think he'd have anything to worry about. 

A flare of green in the corner of his eye was the only warning he had that something was going wrong, before some force was setting his head to buzzing. He hadn't hit anything, the room hadn't looked different. He'd just… walked by and suddenly-- Theron caught himself on the doorway. He could taste blood and it felt like his skin was on fire. 

But the apprentice who fucked up his ritual was moving and that meant Theron needed to get out of here _now,_ so he shoved away from the carved stone and took off, hoping whatever this was would either wear off or at least not knock him out until he was safe on the ship. 

From behind him he heard the apprentice yelling for him to stop, but through some stroke of luck none of the others seemed to stir. 

* * *

Theron never figured out exactly what the botched ritual had done. He confirmed that he wasn't being influenced or tracked in any way and kept an eye on it. Eventually, after Theron's first mission to take out a high profile Sith had gone down without a hitch, he wrote it off as not a big deal. Most likely he'd just been in the radius of an accident and the effects of it had faded with distance. Sucked for the apprentice, but Theron didn't have much pity to spare for a Sith who had caused his own death. 

So he didn't make the connection, when years later there was a bit of green light in the corner of his eye. 

In his defense it was Nar Shaddaa and it was really easy to write it off as just another flashing light. 

He did notice when the Sith started trailing him. 

Big guy. Powerful enough that when Theron checked it looked like the local Imps were in 'do whatever this Sith wants' mode. The name didn't ring a bell but that was normal, with how quickly Sith hierarchy changed. This was probably some new Darth who had killed some old Darth and would be killed off in a year or two by an even newer Darth. Normally, unless a Sith specifically started to make trouble that drew the Republic's attention, any information on him would go into a data file to be ignored unless some bored tech was running statistics. 

Since this Sith was starting out by stalking an SIS agent, he was apparently aiming to get into one of the files they actually had to read. Or he was the minion of someone Theron was actually supposed to be worried about. 

The fourth time he managed to barely avoid the Sith, he was starting to get concerned. This level of stalking meant that the Sith probably had Imperial Intelligence working with him. Worse, it meant that Imperial Intelligence had upped their tracking abilities dramatically. 

It was incredibly annoying, especially since no one was supposed to even be here. 

On the bright side, contacting the local office to get his original (thankfully not as critical as it could be) mission passed off while he played 'distract the Sith' meant he could make a data request. 

The files he got weren't especially illuminating. The files identified him as an ex-apprentice of Darth Baras, presumed dead for a brief time period before reappearing and being denounced by his master. Considering that Darth Baras was purporting to be the Emperor's Voice, the ex-apprentice should have been on the Imperial kill on sight list. Instead, the few recent Imperial encounters they had record of seemed to be incredibly deferential. 

Something was going on. Some Sith machination bullshit. And for some reason Theron was involved. 

Best case, they had twigged Theron as SIS and wanted information, or it was one of those cases where the Sith used the worst method possible to make contact and offered some sort of deal. Worst case, they had figured out Theron had taken out some high profile Sith and...well there were a few ways that could go and none of them were good for Theron. 

He tried to head for the spaceport twice. Both times he spotted the SIth there, waiting. In a republic space. He wasn't in Sith robes and he wasn't making an issue, so the only way to easily kick him out would have been to make a massive deal over that and this guy was too much of an enigma to risk it. 

Normally, Theron would have gone to ground. That wasn't possible this time. Every time he thought he was safe and the Sith showed up anyway, he felt more of his nerve fray. 

By the seventh time he spotted the Sith, Theron was starting to get paranoid. The Sith never gave chase for long. Sometimes it seemed like he was trying to corner Theron, but when Theron managed to slip him he wouldn't pursue him far. 

It wasn't comforting. It proved the Sith _knew_ he would be able to pick the trail back up, no matter how certain Theron was that he stayed away from anything that could have identified him. 

On the fourteenth encounter, it was close enough that Theron could see the wild grin on the Sith's face as Theron managed to duck into an access tunnel and slam the door behind him. 

He was getting away properly. He was sure of it. The Sith was putting effort into catching him before he left off, and the tactics Theron were using _should_ have worked. 

The Sith had to be tracking Theron somehow. Not through the cameras, but through some sort of Force technique. It was possible, if not probable, that Sith had trained Force trackers and this one had managed to get Theron's 'scent'. 

Knowing that was settling. He still felt like a mouse getting played with. He still had to resist the urge to give in to nervousness and constantly eye his surroundings, but _knowing_ there was a tracker took the edge of paranoia off. 

It was easy, at that point, to connect it with the hints of green light that Theron kept seeing. He should have connected it earlier, but it was such an _un-Sith_ color that it wasn't instinctive to associate them. 

The only other time he'd seen that color and Sith was…. 

Theron very quickly compared his memories with this Sith, and...how did that even match up? The math worked but... Some apprentice had hit him with something, and now that Sith just happened to be hunting SIS agents and just happened to be able to track Theron because of it? 

Or _was_ he hunting SIS agents? This was someone who was important in a way that was quiet enough that it wasn't in the SIS databases yet. That probably meant he was one of the rare Sith they actually had to worry about. 

Theron tried to analyze the situation more the next few near encounters. Information in glimpses and one near miss that left his heart in his throat for long minutes afterwards. He couldn't tell whether this guy wanted to kill him or not, but due to the lack of force lightning he was going with 'probably not'. 

That wasn't good. 

He needed to get off the planet. He couldn't outlast a Sith. There was no way for Theron to be certain exactly how powerful the guy was, but he was going to err on the side of assuming that he could stay awake and alert for a lot longer than Theron could. Even implants could only do so much and he'd already been running for over a day. 

The spaceport was a no-go. It was too isolated and too easy for the Sith to predict where he was going. That meant stealing a ship from somewhere else. 

Theron thought he had gotten away with it. It took time. He had his twenty-eighth through thirty-seventh run ins with the Sith while finding a ship, figuring out an approach, hacking what he could ahead of time, and trying to lay a few false trails that would hopefully buy him time for long enough to make a sudden direction switch and get off the planet. 

It wasn't until he let out a sigh of relief as the ship's door closed behind him, and something flashed green anyways, that Theron realized he'd been predicted again. 

There was nowhere to run. 

He tried. He didn't make it very far. The Sith didn't even seem to blink as he deflected the shots from Theron's blaster. The small area taser that Theron set off as the Sith grabbed him should have been able to stop the Sith long enough for Theron to get the door open again, but the Sith just laughed and sent the electricity flying off around them as he crushed the blaster and pinned Theron against the wall. 

If Theron survived this he was going to start carrying poison darts or something. 

Theron resisted the urge to yank at his wrists. It wouldn't work. He was pretty sure the Sith was using the force to hold him, at least partially, so pinning Theron this way had to be more of an intimidation tactic. 

The Sith smiled down at him, almost sweetly if not for the fact that he'd been stalking Theron relentlessly for over a day, "Caught you." 

"Fuck off." 

"No. I've caught you and now you're mine." 

Theron went still, because if he didn't already know what the connection was here that would have some pretty _unpleasant_ implications. 

It still had unpleasant implications. 

"No I am not," he said firmly, as though he wasn't exhausted and pinned. 

"Of course you are. The Force wouldn't have kept us together if you weren't." The Sith's hands tightened painfully over Theron's wrists, pressing them into the wall hard enough to bruise. "If you hadn't run off with the bond at a string, I could have found you sooner. I was always going to track you down eventually, but it delivered you to me early and now I have no intention of letting you go." 

There was a green light rising in the corners of his eyes and Theron did _not_ like the repeated references to that ritual. It was sounding more and more like something deliberate, even though his research afterwards had said the apprentices were _supposed_ to just be doing something to connect themselves further to the Force. 

It would figure, if Theron had chosen to go through the room with the unhinged Sith that went off script. 

Theron forced himself to calm down. This wasn't good. At all. An unknown but clearly powerful Sith was fixated on him for reasons that Theron didn't have a full explanation for. An unknown ritual was making it so that Sith could track him. Said Sith was doing something with said ritual _right now_ and even though Theron could feel nothing different, things were glowing and that was not a good sign. 

Escape plans. He had to-- His normal escape methods probably wouldn't work immediately, because he had to worry about more than electronics and guards for surveillance, but the Sith would have to leave Theron somewhere. Eventually it was inevitable that Theron would get out. Worst case scenario, he'd have to figure out how to kill the Sith and it wasn't like he _hadn't_ taken down powerful Sith before. 

It was settling. Running and hiding from something he couldn't shake had been...not great. Escaping a cell was something he had trained for. 

As the green light faded the Sith leaned down and for a moment Theron was worried that the Sith was going to kiss him. 

Instead the other man just stared into his eyes, looking satisfied. Then he released Theron's wrists, got up, and _left_. 

Theron shoved to his feet the moment he could. It was probably some sort of manipulative tactic. Or maybe it was meant to prove that he could track Theron anywhere. He wasn't going to waste time wondering until he was back in Republic space. 

Theron would appreciate the irony of a Sith saying 'I have no intention of letting you go' and then _immediately leaving_ later, when he was back on solid ground. 

* * *

The first thing Theron did was hit up one of his Jedi contacts and ask her to check what the hell the Sith had done to him. 

It didn't help much. 

"Nothing?" 

"Nothing." She confirmed, looking worried. "From what you describe you should be teeming with the Force. Even if it had been dismissed, there should still be subtle signs of it's passing. And yet…" 

"Could it be some sort of Force you haven't seen before?" 

She hesitated. "Nothing is impossible." 

"But you don't think so." 

"I don't. I'm sorry Theron. I'll do some research and see if I can find anything." 

The second thing he did was pull every relevant file he could get his hands on. There wasn't much, but the data people promised to keep an eye out for him so as soon as something _did_ come up, Theron would know. 

Theron didn't tell them about the ritual. If he did, he'd be desked permanently. Or worse, have to go on a honeypot mission after that exact Sith. A Sith "tracker" being after him specifically was reason enough for them to keep him off missions in Imperial space for the time being. Theron would worry about the rest later, when he knew just how big of a problem he was avoiding. 

When they finally had some more information, Theron didn't find out from the innocuous file he was expecting. He found out from a meeting with several very important people with fancy medals all wanting to know everything he could remember about the Wrath of the Empire. 


End file.
